"Truth serum": Karen Boye's Swedish anti-utopian novel Kallocain

The relevance of the present article is related to the urgent problem in Humanities (cultural studies, philology and sociology): characterization of anti-utopia that emerged in the ХХ and the XXI centuries, and its various national modifications. The purpose of the article is to define typical features of the anti-utopia in the Scandinavian novel Kallocain written by a Swedish writer Karin Boye and draw some parallels with Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We . The article proves the following thesis: the majority of the specific characteristics of anti-utopia are based on the category of the chronotope. The basic methods of the research were descriptive analytical method, comparative typological method, summarization, cultural-historical method, motive analysis, and content analysis of the text. The model of state-building is implemented in the artistic space of both novels. This model is presented as an ideal one; however, a closer look shows that it is the model of the totalitarian system of government: the states are isolated from the surrounding world which is presented in the novels as alien and hostile. Order, stability, and equality prevailing in the World Empire (Boye) and the United State (Zamyatin) are pushed to their grotesque limits and lead to the universal equalization of the citizens, and the governmental control of all the aspects of human life, including the intimate sphere.